The Man in the Freezer Box
by Scythe The Wicked
Summary: Somewhere in the American South three cousins embark on that classic coming of age ritual of seeing something…freaky. Strong language in the second chapter.
1. Chapter 1

Doctor Who and its characters are the property of British Broadcasting Corporation.

* * *

_(What We Saw)_

Every summer my Mom would drive me down to Jasperton, Kentucky, to visit our kin there. Sometimes my Dad would come along, sometimes he'd have to work, sometimes he'd join us in the middle of the stay or come with us but have to leave early. But almost every summer, except for one, I would go for a two-week stay at my granny's house. I knew most of my extended family, or at least met them a couple times. I was the "Northerner" of the family, hailing from Illinois. This did not mean I was an outcast or even that much different. I was kin, and that's all that mattered.

It was during these visits I got to know my two favorite cousins, Todd and Bernadette. Todd was like me, a semi-permanent member of the family. Todd had been born and raised in Atlanta but, like me, visited the family every summer. The difference was that he spent his whole summers in Kentucky, while I just had my precious two weeks. He's my second cousin once removed through my grandpa's brother's daughter. My cousin Bernadette, on the other hand, had lived her whole life in Jasperton and was pretty much stuck there. She's related to me through my granny's mother's sister's son's daughter. If you have the miraculous ability to understand that, you might come to the logical conclusion that Bernadette and Todd aren't kin, but in fact Todd's father is the cousin of Bernadette's father through the Stevenson line, making them second cousins, but not through either connection to me. I _am_ related to the Stevenson line three or four times through marriage, but not by anything biological as far as I know.

The official relations do not matter; only that Todd, Bernadette and I were best friends and I would yearn the whole year just for those two sweet weeks in summer I got to spend time with them.

This story begins in the summer after I turned twelve. To be honest, it actually starts decades before, but I'm just telling what I saw with my own two eyes. The previous summer my Dad took us to California to spend the summer with his folks. So this summer had a special relish for me, Man in the Ice Box excluded. Todd and I were twelve; Bernadette had her thirteenth birthday in May.

On third day there, Bernadette briefed Todd and me about all the things she wanted to show or do with us those three weeks. One third of the list were things we had meant to do the previous summer but had run out of time or had been unable to. Another third were new things we actually did get around to, and the last third were new things we were going to end up putting off until next summer.

The previous night Bernadette, Todd and I had spent half the night on a blanket in my granny's backyard stargazing. Todd pointed out constellations and telling us the myths behind them before we all got bored and just making up stuff. To this day I don't see the constellation Cassiopeia; I see the constellation Whatama, the tragic letter of the alphabet that got ran over by a bus days before its first appearance on Sesame Street. Its identical but daftly named cousin, 'dubba-yew' had to fill in, and that's how it got its start in the English language.

And yeah, we caught fireflies.

The next day I woke up at eleven and waited with Todd (who was also staying at Granny's) in the kitchen. Bernadette lived a fifteen minute walk down the road, and we would wait for her. Around noon, she came bringing with her three peaches picked off a tree in her neighbor's backyard. We all sat on the swinging chair on my granny's porch and I had my first fresh peach. (I can't eat anything in a can or jar anymore after that; it has to be fresh.) We tried to go to a matinee movie, but nothing good was on (at least nothing we would have been let into) so we went to a pond by my Granny's house and went swimming instead.

Somewhere mid afternoon we all were sitting outside a Sonic Drive in eating lunch when Bernadette announced she was going to take me to see the Man in the Ice Box. At first I didn't understand. Bernadette said that her Uncle (and by extension, my uncle, or possible cousin) Boyd kept a dead man's body in a freezer. She happened to say this as I had taken sip of soda and I learned the painful experience of having it come out my nose.

"_What?_" I remembered a couple times I had heard my aunts and uncles joke about the body in Boyd's basement, but never thought it was true. Barring

"Uncle Boyd has a freezer in his basement where he keeps a body," Bernadette repeated.

"You can't keep a dead body in a freezer. The police will come and arrest you for that!" I exclaimed.

"Not if they don't know about it," Bernadette said simply.

"So, what, he just keeps it in the freezer?"

"Yep. He charges kids five dollars to look at it. We're kin though, so he'll let us in to look at it free."

I paused a moment. "Have you seen it?"

"Yep."

I turned to Todd and asked him the same question.

"Nope," he answered. "Heard about it though."

"So," said Bernadette, "you want to see it?"

I didn't say anything for a second, but my gaze passed from Bernadette to Todd back to her. "Yes."

We rode our bikes (Todd rode his own, Bernadette borrowed one of her older brother's, and I took one from granny's basement that had belonged my late uncle Harold). We peddled for a half hour, following Bernadette who seemed to know the way on the dry dirt roads.

I had never met my Uncle Boyd before and only scant heard of him. Todd had met him a few times and I sensed a sort of bated tension from him as we rode towards Boyd's house. Only Bernadette, who claimed not only to know Boyd but the illegal contents of his basement, seemed sure of herself.

Boyd's house was located at the end of a long stretch of dirt road surrounded by untamed willow trees. The house had once been painted white, but who knows how many years had come and gone since then and most of the paint was peeling. Long strips of chipped paint lay about the unmowed yard. A chained bulldog barked as menacingly as it could, but Bernadette was unperturbed/ I moved to the other side of her, away from the bulldog.

"Doesn't anybody tell the police that he's supposed to have a body in there?" I asked Bernadette as we abandoned our bikes and walked to the front porch.

"Probably," she shrugged, ignoring the dog straining from its leash to try to bite her ankles. "But most people don't really believe it. Ones who do are too afraid to come down and see. 'Cept for teenagers, and if they tell, the police probably just think they're making it up. Boyd might be 'timidating to look at, but he wouldn't hurt a soul."

We reached the front door and Bernadette knocked. After a minute a figure approached. Even through the screen door I could see that Bernadette was right: Boyd was intimidating as hell.

He was a tall, fat man. I thought he was about my grandpa's age, though I suppose he could have been younger and just _looked_ like he was grandpa's age. He was wearing overalls. No shirt, no shoes, just the overalls. He was bald but had a dirty grey beard and I noticed his fingernails were all yellow.

"Who's thar?" he shouted.

"It's Bernadette!"

When Boyd recognized her he beamed. I could see that the few teeth left in his head were assortment of yellow and black.

"Who's this here widja?" Boyd asked. "Todd?"

"Yep," answered Bernadette, "and this is my cousin Vin, came all the way down from Illinois."

"Vin? Millie's Vin?" He opened the screen door and we all entered.

"Yessir," I said while thinking of how strongly Boyd reminded me of killers in horror films I watch on TV while my parents were asleep.

"Well, I'll be. Last time I saw you you was still in your mama's belly." I know what he meant, but that sentence left me with disturbing mental image.

"Boyd, can we see the body you have downstairs?" Bernadette inquired.

"Sure, y'all come on in!"

We are led though Boyd's old house down a path of rickety stairs to a basement possibly usable in slasher films.

Boyd walked to the middle of the room to pull the chain that turned on the room's single yellowed light bulb, and I gagged a little in my mouth when I saw the place. There was the usual basement stuff, boxes and old bicycles and an old phonograph, and then there were…other things. There was a cache of shotguns and ammo in one corner, and some of those guns looked older than Boyd. There were mounted animals and trophy deer heads. One wall was full of shelves of different sizes, all filled jars containing things _I don't want to think about_. (Though in retrospect, that one pickled pig fetus was kind of neat looking.)

Against the wall closest to the door sat an ancient freezer. Its outer casing was a yellowish brown, its original color lost. Boyd led us over to it, and pulled out a set of keys out of his pocket and began examining them, one by one. When he found the right key, he unlocked the padlock on the freezer, and opened it. Boyd stepped aside to give us three a better view of the contents.

Well, it was exactly what I was told, but I still wasn't expecting it. I wasn't sure what I was expecting to see. Maybe a skeleton, a fakey looking one you buy from a costume shop or Wal-Mart at Halloween. Maybe something like those mummies they used to make in the Andes that you see on covers of National Geographic. But the body I saw in that freezer looked fresh, like he had died only that morning or hours before. Or minutes before.

The body was that a tall man. He lay in the freezer facing us with his keens folded just enough so that he fit inside. Lining the freezer was an ancient cloth tarp underneath was…something – because his back was propped up so it seemed like he was reclining. He was incredibly pale. Visible wisps of cold air danced around him as the sudden movement of the opened lid brought an influx of air. He was wearing a blue suit that hadn't faded or frayed in the years; I couldn't see his shoes. I looked at his face. It was a long face. Maybe he was handsome in life, but here he just looked strangely serene. I wondered what I would have thought had I known him when he was alive. The man though looked like he was sleeping, and I felt the sudden need to be quiet so I wouldn't accidentally wake him. Then I realized that was stupid.

"How'd he die?" I asked, curiosity overtaking fear.

"Now that thare's a story," chucked Boyd. He turned to face us.

"You never told it to me," said Bernadette.

"Didn't I?"

"Nope. Can you tell it now?"

"Sure can."

"Well, back when I was a boy, one day everyone in town got sick. Now near everyone. Even your grandpa and granny will remember being sick. Near everyone in the town was sick, except me and pa. Pa made a lot of money that summer, working for all the people too sick to. Then sudden-like, a man went missing. Then a girl 'bout my age. Just vanished from their homes.

"Well, then this here English feller came 'round and started asking 'bout the disappearing people, and took a look at the sick people and he said it looked like they was being poisoned. He had an eerie feelin' 'bout it. He was staying with us, and so it was me and Pa who helped him as he went searching 'round the county. Odd sort of feller, he was. Nice man, nothing but nice, but he was an odd sorta feller. Well Pa drove him down to the swamp, and I came along. Well, we went searching in the swamp an' I was the first to see it. It was like a dragon, like one of 'em Chinese dragons, with blue scales. That English feller, he said it was a monster, I don't know from where, but he said it was making all the folk sick and while everyone was too tired it would grab people out of their homes and eat 'em."

He smiled at that point, and I became a new kind of afraid. He continued.

"We drove back to the house and using parts from trucks he made this weapon he said could kill it, no use in trying to get others to help, they wouldn't believe it anyway. We didn't realize is that that waterbeast followed us back to the house and was crawlin' up on us while he was working on the machine. It attacked him as he finished it, then tried to grab me away. The English feller fired the gun on it. It sorta swerved away and the English feller ran forward to grab me away from it as it tumbled about dyin'. It scratched him on his arm, had some sorta poison in its claws. It died just after, Pa took its body and used to display it around town till it got too decayed to show and he just threw it in the back, not even the scales left now.

"The English feller, he didn't die straight away, took him a few minutes. He weren't too sound at the end, kept talking about freezing. Finally he just closed his eyes and stopped breathing. We wasn't too sure what he was talking about at first, but then we remembered that when we was bragging about our new freezer, he talked to us about some people who froze their bodies 'stead of being buried. We figured it was what he wanted. Pa thought it was only right thing to do, since he saved the town and all, and died savin' me. We took the new electric ice box to the cellar and put him in. And here he is, same as he was fifty years ago.

"He never did tells us his name, never could contact his family. Pa and me just kept him down here, and when Pa died I stayed. 'Course, aint the same freezer. Every twenty years or so I go down to town and buy me a new one and put him in it so it don't break and he thaws."

I just stared at him, that man in the freezer. I could see a tear in his sleeve, like Boyd said, but I couldn't see any wound. I don't suppose I would have wanted to.

Boyd turned to us. "So, y'all want some sweet tea?"

When we left the house a few minutes later. Boyd was standing on the porch waving goodbye to us. I waved back, but I didn't say anything. Todd, Bernadette and I biked back to town, back to granny's porch and we all sat on the swing chair.

"Well, what you think?" Bernadette asked.

I turned to her. I thought of that creepy basement, of all the dead stuffed animals on the walls and floors. I thought of the jars pickling items meant to be rotting in the earth. I thought of that uncle- that relation of mine straight out of a movie. I thought of that man in the blue suit saving the town from a tall tale. I thought of that locked freezer and how cold it would be inside.

Bernadette was looking at me with those gentle eyes.

"Cool," I said.

Because Bernadette was looking at me.


	2. What We Did

Stronger language in this chapter.

Happy Halloween.

* * *

I saw the man in the freezer box once more when I was seventeen. I had been gone the previous two summers. Things got messy when my parents divorced and I couldn't afford to come down to Kentucky on my own. Then the summer when I was seventeen, the summer before I was about to go to college, I decided to go myself. I packed a couple bags, wrote a note to my mom and drove my car down to Kentucky. I called my Mom when I got there and she weren't happy about it but she let me stay. I suppose it made my Dad angry so she got something out of it. I caught up with Todd and Bernadette. 

Todd hadn't been in Kentucky the previous summer either. He'd gotten caught spraying graffiti in his high school so he had spent the summer grounded in Atlanta. This year he was going to sign up for the army once the summer was over so he just decided to spend it in Kentucky. Bernadette meanwhile had taken to spending the nights at Granny's rather than go home. That was preferable for all since Granny had gotten older and Bernadette could help her around the house. She had also gotten herself a boyfriend named Dirk. Neither Todd nor I liked him, but we tolerated him for Bernadette's sake.

On my third night there, Todd, Bernadette, Dirk and I had gathered together and were sitting on Granny's porch. Bernadette and Dirk were sitting together on the chair swing and Todd and I were sitting on lawn chairs on either side. Todd and I had just come back from a rock concert and were talking about it when Bernadette mentioned a funeral the week before.

"Whose funeral?" I asked.

"Uncle Boyd."

"What? I didn't know Boyd was dead!" said Todd.

"Me neither," I added.

"Yep," said Bernadette, "He died a while ago. Funeral was last week."

"A lot of people go?" I wondered.

"Not really. Not even Boyd's son bothered to come."

"Really?" said Todd.

"Nope. He'll come down in a couple weeks to go through the house. But he wasn't raised by Boyd, his mama never let him come down to Kentucky. Boyd went up to visit him a lot, but they fell out years ago."

"And he still gets the house."

"Yeah. I'm gonna ask if I can get some of the things, seeing as I spent more time there than he ever did, but it's still all his."

"So he gets everything? Even the man in the freezer box?" I said smiling.

Bernadette laughed. "I guess so."

I turned to Dirk. "Did you ever seen the man in the freezer box?"

Dirk nodded. "Sure did. Cost me fifty bucks too. Freaky fucker."

"Fifty?" I laughed, "I didn't know Boyd upped his prices."

"We need to bury him." Todd said suddenly, and, to my surprise, seriously as well.

"I'd go to that funeral." I said.

"No. _We_ need to bury him."

Bernadette raised an eyebrow. "What d'you mean?"

"Think. When they go through that house and find that body, what do you s'pose they'll come up with? They'll think Boyd killed him."

"No they won't."

"Hell yeah they will," said Dirk, "Christ, I didn't buy that fucking waterbeast story, you think the cops will?"

"But we can just tell them. We all saw the body, we can-"

"We'll get in trouble too." Bernadette said, eyes looking not at me, but forward, nervously.

"No we won't- we all were kids."

"Who saw a crime and didn't report it." Todd said.

"We just saw a dead body!"

"If word gets out about that body, about it being real," Bernadette said seriously to Todd, "They're going to drag Boyd's name through the mud."

"_What_?"

"He was crazy and a hillbilly, but he never hurt anyone! He was the nicest uncle I had and I don't want his name on the news about him being a serial killer or something."

I was quiet. "You in for this Dirk?"

"Sure. Why not?"

I sighed. "Oh, this is so illegal."

---

We didn't drive down to Boyd's that very moment. We had to dig the hole first. Bernadette knew a spot on a spit of land her daddy owned by the river we could bury him. It had once been pasture land but was now laying unused and probably would for at least a few years. Bernadette said that her daddy had planned to give her that land when she older. Technically it wasn't her land, but it was close enough. We drove down there in Dirk's truck with shovels. Bernadette picked out a spot near the edge of the river, where she said a man would be happy to be buried. I suggested we bury her there instead, but that just got me a dark look, so I shut up.

By moonlight we we started digging, and I won't decribe the joys of digging a grave. I have no desire to repeat any experience of that night again. "Is this," I asked them all, "really how you planned to spend your summer vacation?"

"Shut up and dig," grumbled Dirk.

"Why the hell are you doing this?" I asked.

Dirk raised an eyebrow and made a gesture regarding Bernadette I instantly understood - and wish I hadn't asked.

"Never mind, never mind, I don't want to know!"

---

"This is still stupid." I said as we drove to Boyd's house in Dirk's pickup.

"Shut up," Dirk said.

"No, no," Todd interceded, "this is stupid. We're still doing it though."

"I cannot argue that," I admitted.

We pulled into the front yard of the house that was once Boyd's. Without the barking dog in the front yard, the place was an eerie kind of quiet.

"What happened to the dog?" Todd asked.

"My dad shot it," answered Bernadette and no one decided to ask further.

The words "_So illegal so illegal so so illegal"_ repeated over in my head as we walked up to the front door, where Bernadette got a key from under the welcome mat and we let ourselves in. The place stunk of old grease and cigarette smoke and I took a gracious moment to gag on the smell. Bernadette flipped on the lights and went straight to the kitchen. We waited in the hallway.

"The power's still on," Todd said, "That means that the freezer downstairs must still be powered. At least the corpse won't be rotting."

"Thank God for small miracles," I responded

"Yeah."

"I was being sarcastic."

"I wasn't. Have you smelled a rotten corpse?"

"From the smell of this room, very possibly."

"Shut up."

Bernadette returned with the key to the freezer.

"This way."

We all followed Bernadette down to the cellar. The cellar itself had not changed in the five years since I had last been there, except maybe the contents of the jars had grown a little greener. It still gave me the creeps.

The freezer was still there, still humming. I gripped the folded tarp in my hand.

"I guess we better do this."

"Not too late to back out."

No one did.

Bernadette took the tarp from me and unfolded it, then spread it on the floor. We all slowly walked over to the freezer. Bernadette handed Todd the key from her pocket, saying nothing. Todd understood. He took the key and opened the freezer.

The man in the freezer had not changed; he had not been moved. He was still in the same pose as five years before. We all just stood and stared at him a few minutes, maybe a half hour, maybe days. Finally it was Dirk who said "Bernie and I'll take the tarp at his head and feet; you two take the tarp at his sides."

We moved the body to the newer, stronger tarp, and each of us gripping a side tightly, we carried the body in the tarp up the stairs and into the bed of the pickup.

I don't think I need to mention how _totally fucking creeped_ out I was during this whole experience.

I don't need to. I will, but I don't need to.

---

Todd and I sat in the bed of the pickup with the corpse between us as Dirk drove back to the grave site. Bernadette sat in the front seat, occasionally looking back at us. Once during the drive, Dirk opened the back window and called out to us. "How is he?"

"Still dead," I answered.

"What a stiff."

"Shut up."

"I was talking about the-"

"_I know_."

---

Dirk backed the truck a few yards away from the open grave. We all took hold of the tarp again and carried the body to the grave. We held the tarp over the pit.

"Okay, on the count of three, we slowly lower him in," I ordered, "One, two-"

Dirk just let go and the tarp slipped from my sweaty hands. Todd and Bernadette, unable to carry the sudden weight on their own had to just let it drop. The body hit the grave with a loud _thump_.

"Jesus Christ Dirk, what the hell did you do that for?!" I yelled as Dirk took a packet of cigarette out of his back pocket.

"You're right, that was mean of me," he said as he put one to his lips and lit up. "I guess I could a hurt him."

"You're a dick."

We all just stood there a second, as if not sure what to do next.

"I feel like we should say something," said Bernadette.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Read a psalm or something."

"Here lies a man dead. Boyd killed him and locked him in a freezer. The end."

"_Shut up Dirk_."

"C'mon. Let's get this over with," sighed Todd, and he threw me a shovel. All four of us began shoveling dirt into the pit, slowly. I just wanted this night to be over.

That's when I heard the cough.

We all looked up at each other. "Please, for the love of God," I begged, "say that was one of you."

We all looked down into the grave.

The corpse opened his eyes and looked right back at us.

None of us moved, not at first. We just froze on the spot. The dead man grasped onto the walls of his grave and pulled him up into a sitting position. He kept coughing a little more, than stared up at us. There was still frost in his hair.

"Ra-Ra," he uttered, weakly at first, then louder. "Ra-Rah-Rah!"

Then he began screaming.

We followed suit.

Oh don't you tell me you wouldn't have freaked out in the same situation. I _bolted_, barely noticing Todd running at my side or the sound of Dirk's pickup starting and speeding away. I ran. I ran far and I ran fast. It was one those things where your mind turns off and goes straight to the "fight or flight" instinct with me choosing the latter. My heart was pounding, my hands were sweating and my fists clenching so tight sometimes I think I still see the marks were my fingernails bit into my skin.

I ran all the way back to granny's house, behind the swing porch, straight to the grass and dispassionately threw up by the trashcan.

Todd eventually caught up and we were standing on granny's porch together.

"What happened! What the hell just happened?" asked Todd panting.

"He came back to life man," I gasped.

"Yes dickhead, I know that. How the fuck was that possible? He was dead at least five years! That's impossible man, that's fucking impossible!"

Dirk's pickup drove up and he got out. "What the sweet _fuck_ happened?"

"I don't know! He was just dead, and then he… he…_zombie_?"

"Shit!"

"Wait," I said, "Where Bernadette?"

"I don't know," Dirk replied.

"What- what do you mean you don't know? We thought she was with you!" shouted Todd.

"Well she's not."

"What the hell you mean- We have to go back for her!"

"I'm not going back there!"

"Fuck you!" I cried, "We're going back for her."

Then I might have passed out. Maybe. But when I came to, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Dirk's pickup next to Todd.

"You throw up in my truck I'm going to kill you," Dirk growled when he realized I was awake.

"How long was I out?" I inquired. Not that I was sure I passed out.

"Ten minutes," Todd answered, "We would have left you at Granny's, but we didn't want any weird questions in case she woke up and saw you. You okay man?"

"Fine. We going back to-"

"Yeah."

"Good."

My mind went straight back to worrying about Bernadette.

---

The little green numbers on the dashboard of Dirk's pickup said it was five in the morning when we pulled into the Bernadette's spit of land. Dirk parked a few yards farther back than he did when we were burying the corpse. We didn't move.

"She's not here," Dirk said.

"We need to look around," I said.

"What if – what if she's down there?" Todd said.

None of us moved for a minute. I could swear I could hear that body, still moving, still crying, still scratching at the earth around him. I opened the passenger door. "Come on," I said to the other two.

We slowly walked up to the grave, Dirk bearing a flashlight from his car. We stopped for a minute, bracing ourselves before we looked in, fully expecting to see that man staring up at us.

He was gone.

"Shit, shit!" yelled Todd.

"Where'd he go man, where'd he go?" I repeated.

"Shit!" said Dirk. The circle of light from Dirk's flashlight darted and danced from spot to spot around the grave, then all the area around us.

"What do we do?"

"Okay, okay," Todd said, cooling down. "We take the shovels, and we start searching around. That fucker didn't look like he was in running shape, he can't be far."

"Okay," I repeated, "okay."

Though the light was still weak and in the distance, the sun was starting to rise.

---

We spent at least a couple hours searching. I don't remember much, only walking around carrying a shovel for protection, screaming for Bernadette. I begged, I prayed, I reasoned that she was fine. She had to be. She was Bernadette. My cousin, Bernadette. Not Bernie, not Dettie, not Dette. She took me frog-gigging at night, hunting at dawn, fishing on the river bank with rods stolen from our dads and night crawlers as bait. Sure she dates losers like Dirk, but she's the strongest person I know.

"BERNADETTE" I screamed into the woods. Only bob-whites answered.

Finally we caught up with each other back at Dirk's truck and had to admit that Bernadette wasn't here. We drove back to Bernadette's house. We figured she might go back there on account her Dad had a lot of guns and there's no place you'd want to hide from a zombie more than to a place with lots of guns.

Not that we said that aloud.

It was Todd who walked up to the front door and knocked. Dirk and I stayed in the truck. I watched as the door opened and I recognized Bernadette's mother standing behind the screen door. They talked for a few minutes, then Todd nodded goodbye and walked back to the truck.

"She didn't come back home?" I asked as he got in and slammed the door behind him.

"Her ma hasn't seen her in weeks."

"Shit," Dirk hissed, lighting up a cigarette.

"You didn't tell her mom anything?" I asked Todd.

"No. Go back to Granny's, you reckon?" he said.

"And what the hell do you think we're going to do there?" Dirk inquired as he started up the truck and pulled out of the driveway, heading back to Granny's.

"Call the cops."

"And tell them what fuck-wad? Oh, sorry officer, we were burying this seventy-year-old dead body from this freaky redneck hick's basement when it came back to life and ate my girlfriend?"

"Shut up!" Todd yelled.

Dirk pulled into Granny's driveway. Granny's car wasn't in the driveway, maybe she had gone to church. (Was it Sunday?) We walked into the house and I was heading towards the phone when I realized someone was in the bathroom. Bernadette walked out, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, toweling her wet hair.

"Bernadette!" Todd and I yelled.

"Boys!" she said joyously, and ran up to us. She went to Todd first, hugging him veraciously. She pulled back and went for me next, but I pushed her away.

"Where the hell were you?!" I screamed, happy to see her alive, but still _pissed_.

"What?" she asked, sounding confused.

"We just spent half the night looking for you! We went back to the river, you weren't there, we went to your Mom's, you weren't there, we were going out of our fucking minds, where were you!?"

"Oh," she blinked. "I went back."

"You what?"

"Well, when he screamed, I ran the same as you did. But I tripped. By the time I managed to get back up you two were halfway to the wind and Dirk had driven off. Thanks." She paused to give us an evil eye.

"I realized that he had stopped screaming. I must have been out of my mind but I went back to where he was still stuck. He was out of it, for sure, but he was more shocked than anything else. It took him a minute to calm down, but when he did, he started to come back to his senses. Once he was lucid, I helped him out and helped him back to Boyd's house."

"You did _what_?"

"Helped him back to Boyd's house."

"You helped a member of the living dead back to your uncle Boyd's house?"

"He wasn't dead," Bernadette said simply, "He never was."

"And lying in Boyd's freezer for sixty years was-"

"He was in a coma. He explained it to me on our way there. It was something his folk do; when they get real sick they go into this weird coma, their body temperature goes below freezing. Boyd and his Daddy misunderstood him. He wasn't saying 'freeze me'; he was trying to say he was going to _freeze_. But the poison was putting him in some sorta shock so he couldn't get all the words out. When Boyd and his Daddy heard the word 'freeze' and remembered the joke he made earlier about freezing dead bodies they figured that's what he was asking them. All the freezer did was keep him suspended. He didn't need to breathe much, and his heartbeat went so slow it looked like he was dead, but he wasn't."

We were quiet a moment. Then Dirk yelled, "Oh _fuck_ this," and walked out. We heard him get into his truck and drive out. Bernadette didn't seem to look too upset and continued to pat her hair with a towel.

With all the crazy shit I had seen that night, I was at least willing to listen to Bernadette's story. But there was still that nagging question. Todd beat me to it.

"Wait, how'd you walk to Boyd's and walk back in time to take a shower before we got here?"

"I helped him walk to Boyd's," she answered nonchalantly, "He gave me a ride back."

"He gave you-_in what?_" I mumbled before bursting out, "Bernadette Stevenson, you mean to tell me you walked with a zombie back to your dead Uncle's house, a zombie who's been asleep in some crazy redneck's freezer for sixty years then he just happened come alive and you've just gotten out of the shower like nothing's happened?!"

"Well, we made some stops first." Her eyes wandered out the window to the back yard and I followed her gaze. There by the apple tree was what I assumed to be a dark blue port-a-john I was sure wasn't there before. I shook it out of my mind before I could get a second look at it. Something was wrong. (Did she seem _older_?) She looked back at me, and then looked away. There was something she wouldn't or couldn't tell us.

"Wait-what's that?" I pointed at her t-shirt, a shirt I'd never seen before.

"What's what?" she asked.

"On your t-shirt? Where did you get that?"

"Bought it," Bernadette said quickly. She looked down at the floor avoiding our gaze.

I read the shirt out loud:

"2036 Olympics, Cardiff?"

* * *

Author's Note: Boyd is based on an actual person. Boyd's real-life counterpart was a relative of mine I only met once; he died while I was writing this story. I only met the man very briefly, however, so whatever the contents of his basement were, they were no business of mine and were probably _entirely_ legal. 


End file.
